Dianna interrogates a bound celestial in the ruined upstairs office of a mansion while violence continues downstairs. The celestial recognizes her fiery eyes and identifies her as an Ig’Morruthen, a supposedly extinct race from the Gods War. Dianna mocks the celestials’ heroic reputation and bitterly recalls how their world’s fall devastated the mortal world, including her desert homeland of Eoria.

Dianna searches the destroyed office for an artifact Kaden wants, but the real value lies in the captive. After tasting the celestial’s blood, Dianna enters his memories and sees fragments of his life, including family, colleagues, and a journey through Arariel. In the memory, other celestials discuss repeated attacks, Vincent, The Hand of Rashearim, and fear that an old threat may be returning.

Dianna returns to the present with the information she needs. Alistair enters, bloodied from slaughtering the mansion’s other occupants, and Dianna identifies the captive as Peter McBridge, a twenty-seven-year-old second-tier celestial with access close enough to The Hand to be useful. Although Dianna found no sign of the book Kaden is hunting, Peter’s connection to Arariel gives them a potential way into the fortress city.

Alistair uses his own Ig’Morruthen ability to tear apart and rebuild Peter’s mind, enslaving Peter as a spy. Dianna looks away from Peter’s screams and privately acknowledges that some remnant of her mortal conscience still recoils from such cruelty, even though she has served Kaden for centuries. Once Peter is under Alistair’s control, Alistair orders him to forget the attack, clean the office, and serve as Alistair’s eyes and ears.

With Peter compromised, Alistair tells Dianna to help clean up the bodies downstairs. When Dianna asks what they will do with the corpses, Alistair says the starving Ig’Morruthens at home can use them, underscoring the brutality of their mission and Dianna’s uneasy complicity in it.